1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display control method for controlling the display of an image on a display unit for a computer equipment, for example, and a display control apparatus to which the control method is applied, or more in particular to a technique suitable to the case in which a static image, moving image and so on are displayed simultaneously with text information or otherwise images of different forms are displayed simultaneously on a single screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the progress of the computer equipment and the like, a display unit connected to the computer has come to display a static image such as a photo or the like and a moving images such as a movie or the like. With the development of the internet or the like, on the other hand, a television receiver has come to display information such as characters or the like.
The static images such as a photograph or the like and a moving images such as a movie or the like have a great amount of information. On the television broadcasting represented by the NTSC broadcasting, therefore, a beautiful image cannot be transmitted. For this reason, the television receiver supplies a beautiful (improved) image to the users by improving the sharpness, the contract, etc. of the static images such as photos or the like and the moving images such as movies or the like.
This effect however has the advantages that the static images such as photos and the moving images such as movies are clearly and beautifully visible. Nevertheless, such portions as characters of text information and the like become harder to read, and if the brightness of character portions is too high, it leads to the adverse effects that the eyes are easily tired and cannot stand the long-time close watching.
The recent trend toward the incorporation and extension of the use of devices such as CD-ROM and DVD which handle a large capacity of data in the computer equipment has given rise to frequent chances of handling static images such as photos and moving images such as movies.
To meet this situation, in computer display units, an effort has been made to improve the quality of static images such as photos and moving images such as movies by improving the variable range of contrast (brightness). Also, some display units are known which have been further improved by incorporating the sharpness function.
In these display units, the image quality improvement function can be turned on/off (activated/deactivated), or the function level can be adjusted by the user. These functions, however, can be performed only over the entire screen or in a specified area that is preset on the screen.
In the monitor display unit for the computer equipment, for example, assume that an attempt is made to display what is called the image information including static images or moving images in a part of the area in the screen where text information such as characters and numerals or the like are displayed. If the process is performed for improving the image quality in conformance with the image on display, the problem is that the display condition of the text information is deteriorated. It has been difficult for the user to adjust both the image quality and the text quality to a correct state in a simplistic fashion.
In view of this, the present applicant has earlier proposed a display unit in which a plurality of classes of image quality can be set in a single screen (JP-A-10-88958, etc.). Even with this display unit, however, the user cannot easily set the range in which image quality is set such as the range in which each of the images and characters is displayed.
An object of the present invention is to make it possible to easily set the ranges of the respective image qualities, in the case where a plurality of classes of image quality are set in a single screen.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display control method for effecting a predetermined image processing on a video signal to display an image in a display unit, which comprises:
a step for inserting predetermined marker signals into video signals at positions corresponding to at least two corners on a diagonal in a rectangular predetermined range of an image to be displayed;
a step for effecting different processing on video signals outside and inside of said predetermined range; and
a step for moving positions where the marker signals are inserted based on to a predetermined operation input thereby to move the predetermined range in the image to be displayed.
By supplying the display unit with the video signal generated by this display control method, it is possible for the display unit to perform an image processing on the images located in the range designated by the marker signals which is different from the processing for the images in other ranges. In this way, the display control of images in a specific range is made possible, while at the same time making it possible to move the specific range for which the display is controlled, by moving the positions where the marker signals are inserted based on a predetermined operation input.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a display control apparatus for effecting a predetermined image processing on a video signal to display an image in a display unit, which comprises:
a video processing unit for generating a predetermined video signal;
a marker signal insertion processing unit for inserting predetermined marker signals in the video signal at positions corresponding to at least two corners on the diagonals in a predetermined range in one image; and
a control unit for moving, based on a predetermined input, the positions where the marker signals are inserted by the marker signals insertion processing unit.
With this display control apparatus, when a predetermined input is applied to it, the positions where the marker signals are inserted can be moved under the control of the control unit and a video signal can be generated capable of display control of the image in an arbitrary range set by the input operation.